Release Manager

Job Title: Release ManagerJob description: Berkeley Heights, NJ (5Days onsite)Contract12+ years’ experience in IT with 5 years playing release manager role in enterprise application development projectsRelease Planning & Scheduling: Define release calendars, map out timelines, and coordinate version milestones (major updates, minor features, and hotfixes).Cross-Functional Coordination: Align developers, QA testers, SREs (Site Reliability Engineers), and product owners to ensure everyone is ready for deployment dates.Risk & Change Management: Identify deployment risks, build contingency and rollback plans, and manage formal change requests or approval paperwork.Quality Assurance Gatekeeping: Verify that all code has passed through necessary testing, security scans, and staging checks before green-lighting a rollout.Deployment & Traffic Control: Oversee the live launch (using strategies like blue-green deployments, canary releases, or feature flags) and handle live triage if issues occur.Stakeholder & Status Communication: Maintain clear release notes, document changes, and inform non-technical business units of scheduled downtime or new capabilitiesProcess Optimization (DevOps Evolution): As highlighted by insights on Launch Darkly, modern release managers increasingly focus on automating CI/CD pipelines, tracking DORA metrics (lead time, MTTR, deployment frequency), and removing workflow bottlenecks